In a few minutes, I will hop on a train and head down to Washington, DC for the American Group Psychotherapy Association’s annual meeting. In preparation, I thought I should quickly re-read Irvin Yalom’s The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy.

In it, he starts off by delineating the therapeutic experience into eleven primary factors. He spends a bit of time talking about how this is his way of organizing these factors, and how other people may have other approaches. Yet what jumped out at me were the first few factors.

1. Installation of hope
2. Universality
3. Imparting information
4. Altruism
5. and so on.

As I thought about this, I thought about my membership in a very large group, known as the U.S. population. What are the fears and anxieties that we as a large group face? How do we address these fears and anxieties? What are the group leaders doing to help us address these fears and anxieties?

It would seem as if what we need is a leader who encourages us to hope for all that is good, instead of fearing some external factors, a leader that helps us understand the universality of our condition, between fellow citizens, independent of political orientation, and between nations. Such a leader, would I believe impart important information to us, inspire us to altruism and so on. This puts the current U.S. Presidential race into a particularly interesting light.

So, this evening, I will hear Dr. Robert Michels talk about ‘Psychology and Politics’. I’m ready for that talk. So, I will depart shortly for what I hope will be a wonderful and enlightening experience. My friends on the Group Psychotherapy mailing list have certainly installed that hope in me and I look forward to the information that will be imparted, and whatever changes it may bring about in my own life.